On 21 July 1861 the Union army of Brigadier General Irvin McDowell attacked the Confederates of Generals P.G.T. Beauregard and Joseph E. Johnston along Bull Run, near the railroad junction at Manassas in northern Virginia. A morning flank attack drove the Confederates back, but they rallied on Henry Hill, where Thomas J. Jackson earned the name Stonewall. Late in the afternoon Confederate reinforcements broke the Union right, and the retreat turned into a rout. It was the first major land battle of the Civil War, and it showed both sides that the war would be long.
On to Richmond
Fort Sumter had fallen in April, but the war had not yet been fought in earnest. Under public pressure for a quick end, President Abraham Lincoln pushed McDowell to advance on the Confederate capital at Richmond. On 16 July McDowell marched out of Washington with about 35,000 men, most of them short-term volunteers with little training. Their target was Manassas Junction, where the railroad from the Shenandoah Valley met the line to Richmond.1
Beauregard held the fords of Bull Run with about 22,000 men, according to the National Park Service. Johnston's army in the Shenandoah Valley slipped away from the Union force watching it and came east by rail, most of it arriving on 20 and 21 July. The National Park Service battle summary puts the troops engaged at 28,450 Union and 32,230 Confederate, and the American Battlefield Trust gives the same figures.2
Matthews Hill and Henry Hill
McDowell's plan was to make a show at the Stone Bridge while two divisions marched around the Confederate left and crossed Bull Run at Sudley Ford. The march was slow, and a Confederate signal officer, E. P. Alexander, spotted the column and warned Colonel Nathan Evans at the bridge by signal flag: look out for your left, you are turned. Evans shifted his brigade to meet it, and from about 10 a.m. the two sides fought on Matthews Hill until the outnumbered Confederates gave way.3
The beaten brigades rallied on Henry Hill, around the house of the widow Judith Henry, where Jackson's Virginia brigade had formed behind a line of guns. During the fighting there Brigadier General Barnard Bee pointed to Jackson's men standing firm, and from then on Jackson was known as Stonewall; Bee himself was killed. McDowell pushed two Union batteries forward onto the hill, close to the Confederate guns. Shells fired at the Henry house mortally wounded Judith Henry, and the batteries were captured and recaptured as the fight swayed back and forth around them.4
The rout
Late in the afternoon fresh Confederate brigades, one of them brought by rail from the Shenandoah Valley, extended the line and struck the Union right on Chinn Ridge. The Union withdrawal began in order but turned into a rout when the retreating soldiers met the road to Washington jammed with the carriages of congressmen and other civilians who had come out to watch the battle. Confederate President Jefferson Davis reached the field as the fighting ended, but his army was too disorganized to pursue. By 22 July the beaten Union army was back behind the defenses of Washington.5
Casualty estimates differ. The National Park Service battle summary gives 2,950 Union and 1,750 Confederate casualties; the American Battlefield Trust gives 2,896 Union and 1,982 Confederate.6
The battle convinced the Lincoln administration that the war would be long and costly. Ninety days of service was clearly not enough, and Congress expanded the army and lengthened enlistments. McDowell was replaced by Major General George B. McClellan, who set about reorganizing and training the troops. The full story of the battle is in our article on the First Battle of Bull Run.7
Also on this day
- 1798: Battle of the Pyramids. Near the village of Embabeh outside Cairo, Napoleon's French army met the Mamluk forces of Murad Bey during the French invasion of Egypt.
